“Our original hypothesis was to use Al for helping people build better habits to transform their lives. This attracted a passionate niche, but we couldn’t build conviction that it could be a VC-scale business,” Chopra said across announcements on X, LinkedIn, and the official website of Nintee.
Chopra said the company had tried another pivot to explore education- and learning-related ideas, but discovered that building a successful consumer app currently is hard, having to compete for attention against wider platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Fortnite.
He added that the funding raised by Nintee, the majority of which is still remaining, will be returned to all investors over the next few weeks.
Chopra is also founder of Wingify, a New Delhi-based website testing software provider that has been bootstrapped since inception.
All employees working at Nintee will be given four months of severance pay and an open offer letter to join Wingify, Chopra shared. These employees will be offered the same salary without any gap in employment, he added.
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On its twelfth anniversary on May 27, 2022, Chopra had shared on X that Wingify had achieved an annual recurring revenue milestone of $30 million, while being profitable and employing over 300 employees. In the same year, the workforce grew to 400 across 65 cities and towns in India and six global locations.The company has been bootstrapped, meaning it has never raised any funding from external investors. The company makes VWO, a testing tool that allows marketing professionals to create different versions of their websites.
Nintee, on the other hand, joins a growing list of startups that have tried their hand at building for the direct consumer in edtech, post-Covid. In September 2022, live tutoring and personalised online coaching startup Lido Learning filed for bankruptcy. Separately, in July 2023, FrontRow, a learning platform for non-academic skills, shuttered operations as well.